I. Field
The following description relates generally to wireless communications, and more particularly to utilizing power-based rate signaling for uplink scheduling in a wireless communication system.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication; for instance, voice and/or data may be provided via such wireless communication systems. A typical wireless communication system, or network, can provide multiple users access to one or more shared resources. For instance, a system may use a variety of multiple access techniques such as Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM), Time Division Multiplexing (TDM), Code Division Multiplexing (CDM), Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, (OFDM), and others.
Common wireless communication systems employ one or more base stations that provide a coverage area. A typical base station can transmit multiple data streams for broadcast, multicast and/or unicast services, wherein a data stream may be a stream of data that can be of independent reception interest to a mobile device. A mobile device within the coverage area of such base station can be employed to receive one, more than one, or all the data streams carried by the composite stream. Likewise, a mobile device can transmit data to the base station or another mobile device.
Generally, wireless multiple-access communication systems may simultaneously support communication for multiple mobile devices. Each mobile device may communicate with one or more base stations via transmissions on forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from base stations to mobile devices, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from mobile devices to base stations.
Wireless communication systems (e.g., OFDM systems) oftentimes schedule downlink and uplink transmissions. As an example, base stations commonly assign channels, times, frequencies, modulation schemes, code rates, and the like for mobile devices to utilize for communicating over the uplink. Base stations typically select code rates and modulation schemes, for instance, for each mobile device based upon information (e.g., link-adaptation, traffic requirements, amount of available power of the mobile device, interference costs/constraints, . . . ) periodically obtained from the respective mobile device over the uplink. Further, a base station may transmit an assignment to a mobile device over the downlink, where the assignment specifies a channel to be utilized for transmission as well as a code rate and modulation scheme. The mobile device may employ the assignment to transmit via the uplink at a rate up to the assigned code rate (e.g., depending on a number of frames, available power, . . . ). However, the mobile device may provide a coarse understanding of information utilized to determine the code rate and/or modulation scheme; hence, the base station may effectuate selecting the code rate and/or modulation scheme with less knowledge of such information as compared to the mobile device. Moreover, transmission of such information from the mobile device to the base station introduces a time delay that may lead to a lack of synchronization.